CRN Storage News

Solution centers are nothing new to the channel. Many vendors will build showrooms where they highlight the various functions of their product sets. But these centers are a rarity in the government channel--especially among solution providers.

Overland Storage's OEM deal for entry-level tape libraries has fallen through. Overland executives said on Thursday that the company was notified by Dell that Dell plans to terminate the OEM agreement the two had for two automated tape libraries developed by Overland. Overland first unveiled the 12-cartridge and 24-cartridge tape libraries, codenamed Dreadnaughts, in November of last year. At that time, channel sources said Dell had signed an agreement with Overland to OEM the libraries.

When EMC announced plans to make RSA the cornerstone of its new security division, the Hopkinton, Mass.-based storage giant brought in a vendor that's in the midst of a strong growth phase fueled by strong sales of its authentication and access control technologies.

Art Coviello, the former CEO of RSA Security and president of EMC's new security division, is charged with building the division into a billion dollar business. In an interview with CRN this week at RSA's annual partner event in Phoenix, Coviello discussed how RSA will help EMC realize its goals for information lifecycle management and how channel partners will benefit.

QLogic is acquiring SilverStorm Technologies to become a full-line InfiniBand technology supplier as the market for high-performance computing starts to mature. The acquisition also will intensify the competition between QLogic and Cisco, which in April acquired InfiniBand technology developer Topspin.

Seagate Technology unveiled its new MobileMax line of mobile PC hard drives as part of a move to differentiate its legacy Seagate and Maxtor drive lines in the wake of its acquisition earlier this year of Maxtor.

Microsoft set off a furor among developers last week when it disclosed that Visual Studio 2005 won't be fully compatible with Vista and that older versions of Visual Studio won't be supported at all on Vista.

Adaptec next week plans to introduce three new network storage systems for small businesses and remote and branch offices featuring both NAS and iSCSI support. The three new Snap-brand storage appliances are aimed at the growing small business storage market.

Adaptec next month is expected to unveil a device with built-in software to turn an industry-standard server into a combination NAS and iSCSI SAN array. With the expected release of its OnTarget technology next month, Adaptec joins a small group of vendors selling storage-specific operating systems embedded as firmware on a bootable module, called a disk-on-module (DOM) or, more commonly, a dongle. These modules plug into an IDE port on nearly any standard server, turning the server into a NAS and/or or iSCSI appliance.

Startup RingCube Technologies on Tuesday launched Mojopac software, which can duplicate a user's Windows desktop, complete with applications and data, and stuff it into a USB flash drive, an iPod or even a cell phone.

Bell Microproducts chairman, CEO and founder Don Bell becomes one of the elder statesman of the IT distribution industry with the retirement next week of Steve Raymund as Tech Data CEO. He recently spoke with CRN about the addition of former Ingram Micro president and COO Mike Grainger to Bell Micro's board and other initiatives at the distributor.

PortAuthority Technologies now has an extra $18 million to tide it over until it becomes profitable thanks to a new round of venture capital funding. The company develops software and appliances to prevent what its calls "information leaks." It detects when certain data is made available outside of a company's protected data infrastructure and either quarantines that data, audits it, or encrypts it to prevent its access by unauthorized users.

Compellent Technologies has an extra $15 million in the bank thanks to a new round of funding. It's money the Minneapolis-based developer of technology for implementing automated tiered storage really doesn't need to get to sustained profitability, but it will help the company as it moves towards a possible IPO next year.